Guilt appeals in cause-related marketing

TLDR

Despite the growth of cause‑related marketing, little is known about how consumers process cause‑focused messages that contain emotional appeals. The study aims to clarify how product type and donation magnitude moderate guilt appeals in CRM and to identify when such appeals backfire. The study found that guilt appeals are generally more effective than non‑guilt appeals, yet they backfire when the product has high hedonic value or the donation magnitude is large, and that the interaction between guilt appeal and donation magnitude is particularly pronounced for hedonic products, highlighting the need for marketers to understand these dynamics to avoid negative consumer reactions.

Abstract

Despite the growth of cause-related marketing (CRM), little is known about how consumers process cause-focused messages that contain emotional appeals. The present research seeks to further the understanding of guilt appeals in CRM by clarifying the moderating roles of product type and donation magnitude, and exploring the situations when a guilt appeal backfires. Although experimental results indicate that a guilt appeal is more effective than a non-guilt appeal, a guilt appeal backfires when the perceived hedonic value of a product is high. A high donation magnitude also eliminates CRM effectiveness of the guilt appeal. There is an interaction between guilt appeal and donation magnitude when promoting hedonic products with CRM. The findings underscore the importance for marketers of learning more about how guilt appeals work, and in turn describe how practitioners can avoid negative consumer reactions to their guilt appeals.